Elia Gourgouris

Why organisations work with Elia Gourgouris

• Eighteen years of private clinical psychology practice behind the keynote. When he talks about mental health and workplace wellbeing, the substance is clinical experience translated for a corporate audience.
• A named framework in 7 Paths to Lasting Happiness, now published in Mandarin, Cantonese and Greek editions. Audiences leave with a structured model they can put into operational practice the following week.
• A dedicated crisis playbook in 7 Keys to Navigating a Crisis, co-written with Konstantinos Apostolopoulos for pandemic-era and crisis conditions. Useful when leaders need wellbeing guidance that still works when the ground is moving.
• Active across the US and Europe, with recent keynotes at KPMG’s 25 HR Symposium and the Hellenic Institute of Customer Service in Greece. A practical option for organisations with European operations that want a speaker fluent in both Anglo-American and Greek corporate cultures.
• Works with leaders between events, not only from the stage. An active executive coaching practice means the keynote is grounded in current client work, and follow-up coaching is available when an organisation needs more than a one-off session.

Biography highlights

• President of The Happiness Center, a positive psychology practice focused on corporate wellness and personal success.
• Founding Partner at The Global Institute of Thought Leadership.
• Author of 7 Paths to Lasting Happiness, Amazon bestseller translated into Mandarin, Cantonese and Greek.
• Co-author with Konstantinos Apostolopoulos of 7 Keys to Navigating a Crisis: A Practical Guide to Emotionally Dealing with Pandemics and Other Disasters.
• Keynote engagements include KPMG’s 25 HR Symposium, the Hellenic Institute of Customer Service, and sessions for Bank of America audiences.
• BA in Psychology from UCLA, followed by MA and PhD in psychology, and eighteen years in private clinical practice before moving into executive coaching and keynote work.
• Regular contributor to Thrive Global; co-host of The Kindness and Happiness Connection podcast.

Biography

Workplace wellbeing programmes often fail at the join between clinical insight and operational reality. Clinicians know what changes behaviour under pressure. Boards know what gets funded. Most corporate well-being work lives in the first category without translation to the second.

Eighteen years as a clinical psychologist in private practice sit behind Dr. Gourgouris’s current work as an executive coach and keynote speaker. His 7 Paths to Lasting Happiness framework, published in 2015 and now available in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Greek editions, is the practitioner synthesis of that clinical career.

The second book, 7 Keys to Navigating a Crisis, co-written with Konstantinos Apostolopoulos, extends the framework to acute conditions. It was written during the pandemic and has since been used across corporate transitions and personal adversity. Recent corporate keynotes include KPMG’s 25 HR Symposium, the Hellenic Institute of Customer Service, and sessions for Bank of America audiences.

Outside the corporate practice, Gourgouris was Executive Producer of the reality series Cash Cowboys and is developing a new series, The Kindness Givers. He contributes regularly to Thrive Global and co-hosts The Kindness and Happiness Connection podcast. The media work reaches audiences that the HR briefing rarely does, and carries the same clinical argument across.

Key speaking topics

• Positive leadership
• Corporate wellbeing and mental health
• Workplace culture and trust
• Resilience and agility
• Crisis navigation and recovery
• Employee engagement and retention

Ideal for

• CHROs and people leaders are rebuilding culture after a period of change or organisational distress.
• CEOs and senior leadership teams where burnout and retention have become board-level issues.
• Wellbeing and mental health function leaders looking to add clinical credibility to in-house programmes.
• Corporate audiences in Greece and wider Europe, where a speaker fluent in both Anglo-American and Greek corporate cultures adds value.

Audience outcomes

• The 7 Paths to Lasting Happiness model is applied to personal practice and to how a team is run.
• Language and evidence to argue for wellbeing and mental health as measurable business inputs.
• Specific techniques for building team resilience and trust that can be used in the next team meeting.
• A clinical perspective on what actually changes behaviour under pressure, and what tends to fail.